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Booth said, “We have been struggling to work out how the new Design and Distribution legislation will operate for general insurance. On 23 July we met with Treasury officials to discuss this issue, and presented a possible approach.

“We are continuing to develop the concept, and will provide further details in due course.”

Booth elaborated that the concepts are difficult, but he thinks there may well be a way forward. Both NIBA and the Insurance Council of Australia have expressed that as currently drafted, there remains substantial ambiguity around how the obligations contained in the Design and Distribution Obligations and Product Intervention Powers Bill 2018 are intended to apply to mass marketed retail products.

“Our next step will be to discuss the matter with the Insurance Council, to see if we can develop a jointly agreed approach,” he said.

He also thanked NIBA’s legal adviser Mark Radford for his detailed work on this issue. You can access our previous coverage on this topic here, here, here and here.